


If I stumble

by estherlyon



Series: Prompts in a Galaxy far far away [7]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, May 4th Exchange, Mission Fic, Pre-Relationship, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-02 02:24:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14534640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estherlyon/pseuds/estherlyon
Summary: “You think I have? Gone to school?”She knew for a fact he had as little formal schooling as she did. He had left that pretty much clear when he said he had been in this fight since he was six years old… There was a difference between them, however.“Training to pull off this sort of shite was your entire kriffing education. I was taught to survive. And well, to blow things up.”





	1. They're gonna eat me alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ibonekoen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibonekoen/gifts).



> Written for the Rebelcaptain May 4th Exchange. The prompt was "Teaching might seem like a strange occupation to choose, for someone who has never been to school." 
> 
> The other two chapters will be posted in the next two days. 
> 
> Thank you very much to the lovely [ melanoradrood ](http://melanoradrood.tumblr.com/) for beta'ing. :)
> 
> Titles are from Metric lyrics because I ran out of ideas and the clock was ticking.

_“_ We’re going to – what? _”_

Jyn felt Cassian’s hand on the small of her back – like on Jedha, her brain whispered traitorously – and she closed her eyes as not to turn around and bat his hand away, because this was…

Well, _ridiculous_ was a word for it. 

Draven merely raised his eyebrows at her. The entire room was silent.

She momentarily closed her eyes, hands gripping the table in front of her, and said words that were so new to her, they felt odd tumbling through her teeth.

“I apologize. Please go on.”

“You are both being sent to the Academy on Mandalore, undercover as substitute instructors. I was going to say, before I was interrupted,” the general threw the barest of glances in Jyn’s direction and she didn’t miss the smile on Princess Leia’s lips, “that you have three days to recruit at least three people to be our contacts there. Our previous assets at the academy… Well, they graduated.” 

An analyst in the room actually snorted at that. Draven was still speaking, however.

“They graduated and were obviously sent to different outposts, where they are currently being very helpful, but we _need_ new assets on Mandalore.”

Jyn felt her head throb. Now not only because she was being asked something she deemed impossible, but because of the predicament in which it put the man whose hand was ghosting her back. They had been released by medical for longer missions just mere weeks ago and she knew for a fact that just like her, he was still waking up with hollow screams clawing at his throat. She stole at glance at him where he was standing next to her.

This was _not_ what she was imagining when they were called in for a briefing.

She reached behind her and grabbed at his fingers, calloused in the places a sniper’s should. They were warm and sure, not trembling at all, which made mild relief course through her.

Once they were dismissed, she bolted out of the command room. Her first instinct was to run towards their quarters, but _Home One_ had these huge transparisteel viewports and as she walked off past one of them, Cassian’s not unwelcome presence lurking a few steps behind her, she felt tempted to stop and look outside.

Deep space stretched out before her and she appreciated that for the first time in her life, she was buoyant within it but at the same had a home. It warred with her feelings regarding what was being asked of her, however, in exchange for that comfort. Not because she didn’t want to help, but because she felt utterly useless in this scenario. She was not a spy. A saboteur? Sure. A thief? Definitely. A soldier? Well, she had been one for eight years. But spying? Sure, she had passed for someone else, but they were always iterations of the same woman. Liana Hallick was Tanith Ponta who was also Kestrel Dawn and in one way or another, all these women had been Jyn Erso.

She turned her head in Cassian’s direction, letting him know it was okay to approach her. It made something flutter in her gut, how he was always there for her, but at a respectful distance, for all she had felt crowded by him in the days leading up to Scarif (crowded, but never threatened, she thought bitterly). In the last few, when she found him surreptitiously looking at her through things like target practice and meals, she wished that distance were a little shorter.

He came to stand next to her, her head barely reaching his shoulder, and letting out a sigh was all she could do not to bury her face there and scream in frustration.

“I’ve never been to school and they want me to pass for a teacher. Ask me to infiltrate the Imperial Palace and plant a bomb under the karking Emperor’s throne. But this-“

“You think I have? Gone to school?”

She knew for a fact he had as little formal schooling as she did. He had left that pretty much clear when he said he had been in this fight since he was six years old… There was a difference between them, however.

“Training to pull off this sort of shite was your entire kriffing education. I was taught to survive. And well, to blow things up.”

“It’s three days,” he simply answered.

Her only reply was a grunt in his direction.

“They’ll probably have us supervising the cadets. Nothing major. Nothing you haven’t done with our recruits since medical released you.”

She turned to look at him, something almost like a whine coming out her, “Cassian…”

“I know, but we’re spread thin. The Sward cover hasn’t been blown and they need me to do this. I-“ 

Jyn felt something in her stomach drop with realization and then she allowed herself to _really_ look at him. 

“You asked them.” 

His jaw was slacked off, his eyes looking out at the viewport to the tiny bright specks in the darkness like he was casually admiring the view. In the months since they had been fighting together, she had noticed more than ever how the war had been catching up to him. He was twenty-six, but she had spotted the odd grey hair on his head glimmering in the washed out lighting of the cruiser’s corridors. His eyes had always looked old, she supposed, but now that she paid more attention to them, she saw that they were almost always staring at things that weren’t there. 

Like now, despite his pretending otherwise.

Guilt washed her mouth with something acrid and she swallowed hard.

But still. 

“I’m not as good at this as you think I am.”

“You’re _exactly_ as good at this as I think you are,” now he turned to look at her and well...

As with the other moments when Cassian had complimented her since their first meeting, she didn’t actually know what to do with herself. She was still finding her footing in the Alliance, getting used to having things she had missed after being on her own for so long. And this? People saying _nice_ things about her? Well, it threw her for a loop, made her at first lash out, because there had to be an ulterior motive.

Which reminded her:

“I’m not a good recruiter,” she mumbled.

A mouse droid that was skittering past them came to a halt at the sound of sudden laughter. She turned to him, eyes wide and hands on her hips, in between disbelief that he had allowed himself such a reaction and feeling something hot creeping from under the collar of her second-hand uniform jacket.

He put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his lips still turned upwards, “that was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

She opened her mouth to retort, shoving his hand away, but he made a conciliatory gesture.

“Jyn,” his voice was much lower now, his brow furrowed, “Chirrut, Baze and Bodhi were going to Scarif with you in a stolen shuttle. I- You- You got me to recruit a whole army to follow you. You are probably one of the best recruiters in the Rebellion whether you are conscious of it or not.”

Her response to this was to shut her eyes tightly, because every time she remembered that day, the way he looked at her on that hangar - so earnest with a crowd of people behind him, most of which didn’t come back with them, she felt so overwhelmed - she felt she might burst. That had been only the first time he said something to her that made her feel like-

Well, like someone had shut off the gravity generator in a ship she was in.

“ _I believe you”_ , he had told her then and she had balked at the mere notion.

It seemed like he was saying the same thing now.

She counted her breaths, steadily, and tried not to belie any more of her insecurities. If he had asked for her to come along in this mission, she was going to make sure she didn’t screw it up.

So Jyn nodded and watched as Cassian’s shoulders dropped their tension just the tiniest amount.

 

*

 

She had shoved her doubts to the back of her head, but it was one thing to act like this was just another ordinary mission – something like a supply run – when they had been loading the new U-Wing and hurtling through hyperspace, and quite another to drop into real space and come face to face with Mandalore’s greenish grey surface. 

The briefing book said they were to land on a closed off spaceport just outside Sundari. There, an Alliance contact would have an adapted military speeder waiting for officers Joreth Sward and Helaine Goldwyn to make their way into the domed city. There, they were to immediately present themselves at the Imperial Academy personnel office to be assigned quarters and their schedules for the three days they were supposed to fill their colleague’s posts.

Jyn sighed in disgust when she caught sight of what lay on the skimpy bedspread of her bunk: that abhorrent grey uniform, starched to its very last fibers, including a ridiculous cap. She had no idea what she was supposed to do about her hair, but she assumed there was something about that in the brief; she had pushed reading that Force-awful part of it until she had no option.

She was so busy staring at that uniform, neatly laid out in a way that bewilderingly seemed to scream Imperial order and Cassian at the same time, that she missed their landing. So she shut the door to her cabin, stripped, and with her datapad in front of her, managed to pull the kriffing clothes on in what passed as tidiness. She found a mirror and tugged her messy bun apart, relieved to find out that all that Imperial regulation required was that no hair be left hanging over her face. Two tries and several hairpins later – somehow even those the Alliance had procured for her – and she stepped out of her cabin, clomping away in her heavy regulation shoes.

Only to come face to face with her male counterpart, his cheeks so smooth, she almost got whiplash from the double take she found herself doing.

“Huh,” she said, unused to the sight of his bare chin.

He seemed equally perturbed and she figured that was because for once, she was not hiding behind her hair. He did something with his mouth, like he was cleaning his teeth, and she was about to ask him what she had screwed up in her uniform when he briskly said, “let’s go.”

When they got off the ship, there was no one there, but an Imperial speeder adapted for Mandalore’s inhospitable atmosphere. They got in silently and shot off out from the spaceport’s protection into the desert outside. Soon enough, Sundari’s dome gleamed at a distance in the speeder’s viewport and Jyn started feeling her heartbeat pound in her ears. She sat back in her seat, trying not to let Cassian notice her nervousness, and was busy trying to talk herself into calming down until they pulled up outside the Academy’s building, a resplendent thing of permacrete and green transparisteel from which the city’s artificial sunlight glinted painfully into Jyn’s eyes when craned her neck to look at it. Cassian cleared his throat and shot her a look. Something about his face made her stomach churn.

The only reason these were not going to be longest three days in her life was because she had been in far worse straits than these before she met the man in the Imperial uniform walking ahead of her.

“Captain Sward reporting for substitute duty, Sir,” he drawled as he approached the coiffed woman behind a desk at the office he led her to.

The Imp was blonde down to her eyelashes, which framed green eyes in a freckled face. She bared her teeth at them in a manner Jyn found reminiscent of the posh people her parents hung around on Coruscant when she was supposed to be too young to remember these sorts of things (but there it was). The way the woman’s eyes landed on her – a major, as she could see by her officer’s pips – propelled the words out of her mouth.

“I’m Lieutenant Goldwyn, Sir. Reporting along.”

She felt air lock into her lungs even though she could feel she was breathing normally.

The woman glanced at a datapad next to her right elbow and raised her eyebrows, “ah, yes. At ease, officers. Follow me.” 

Jyn’s diaphragm did a funny little jolt. For a second she admitted she had wished the woman had caught on to them and they had shot themselves out of the situation.

That at least was familiar territory.

Major Endario, as Jyn caught from the woman’s nametag, abruptly turned on her sharp heel – identical to the one she was wearing – and said brusquely, “I hope you two are not averse to sharing quarters.”

Cassian’s eyebrows were drawn together minutely, “with other officers?”

“Oh, no,” Endario scoffed, “I put you two in a room, since we were told you worked together previously.”

Jyn had to fight her eyebrows not to climb up into the brim of her hat.

“We don’t mind, sir,” she quipped, “thank you.”

She caught Cassian looking at her out of the corner of her eye.

After that, they walked in silence, their shoes clicking on the marble floor leading to the private wing of the academy’s building. Behind them, Jyn only registered the buzzing of the hovercart that was carrying their luggage. For a planet whose reputation rested on its fearsome fighters, Jyn found such silence in what was supposed to be a military academy slightly disconcerting.

Soon enough, Endario sharply turned into a corridor. In a nook near one of the lifts, she stopped in front of a door and tapped in a code.

“Here you are.” 

The room looked – well, cozy was one word that came to mind and for something that looked like a nook, was surprisingly large. Jyn was reminded of the fact that this had not always been an academy to train soldiers, but politicians. The bedding and the two chairs were in the ascetic Imperial grey, but the wood paneling on the walls and the shiny spotless marble under their feet was exactly the sort thing one associated with the political elite at the time of the Old Republic. It was astoundingly well preserved. There was a door that led to a ‘fresher and, once Endario had left them to make themselves comfortable, she had peeked in and saw it had been refurbished with a sonic and a small metal sink. 

Jyn turned back and found Cassian fiddling with the lock, his hat perched neatly on the hanger by the door, so that a few wisps of his hair were falling on his face.

Well, sharing quarters with him was also something she was familiar with, at least.

Although _not_ in a scenario in which their friends weren’t always bursting through the door, as they had in the months they had been stationed on _Home One_. Something tightened in her chest when she realized for the first time that Cassian was the only person she knew in this entire frigging planet. And while she had been used to being alone in different – and often dangerous circumstances – being alone _with him_ was something else entirely.

For one thing, she would have to stop staring at him like she was moony thirteen-year-old.

So much for familiar territory.


	2. The world's a beast of a burden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [ melanoradrood ](http://melanoradrood.tumblr.com/) for beta reading! 
> 
> I apologize to anyone who's got any knowledge of military life for any slip ups. I know I'm way over my head here.

At 1200 sharp, someone knocked on their door and came to escort them into the mess hall. Students and teachers ate in the same large refectory, but were kept at a distance and served different meals, and despite herself, Jyn felt her stomach grumble at the sight of the plateful of meat and fresh vegetables they were served after so long in hyperspace. She ate in silence, mimicking Cassian’s table manners, keeping her ears open to the swirling conversation around her.

The people there were Imperial officers, sure, but above all, they were teachers so their conversation mostly concerned their students and the Academy in general. She found herself chewing her food more fiercely as time went by, because all these people seemed to do was complain: the cadets were lazy, the Empire was cutting the educational programs to focus on weapons, their Academy seemed to struggle in comparison with others, which was ridiculous considering they were on Mandalore, a planet with a martial tradition of sorts. The gist of it was: it was a testament to how ridiculous the New Mandalorian regime under the Duchess had been, the state in which Mandalore’s youth found themselves.

By Cassian’s bored expression – despite it being his default countenance whenever he was around strangers – this was apparently normal. 

At one point, he picked up a cup of caff after they were done eating and approached an older man she recognized from the Faculty profile. Cassian's eyes managed to convey that Jyn should stay where she was and she was only too happy to comply. The large, bearded man gestured for Cassian to follow him in the courtyard outside, and Jyn was left by herself, tinkering with her own cup of the warm beverage, trying not to panic too much because: first, she couldn’t see where he had gone; second, they hadn’t been assigned their afternoon duties yet.

A few minutes later and he was back, dropping casually onto the seat next to her. It was only a flash, as his eyes met hers, as there no way to hide his face – his hair was neatly combed to the side like the other karking assholes’ around them – but there it was. Was it a smile? A little triumphant thing? She couldn’t really tell. And either way, she was prevented from dwelling on it by her datapad pinging.

And just like that, relief trickled down her back because apparently she had been assigned to the shooting range. Her brief on Helaine had indeed told her that she was a weapons expert, but she didn’t know what she was going to do if she had been told to stand in front of a crowd of cadets in some auditorium and lecture them on something. But then she had always suspected Draven would do what he could to afford that scenario.

She turned to Cassian, whose hand was half on its way to grabbing back his cap, “what have you got?”

There was that non-smile around his lips, “Alderaanian.”

She couldn’t help but snort.

 

*

 

By the time she was back in their quarters after an afternoon supervising the cadets in the shooting range, she felt a little lighter, the result of feeling she had the situation under control for the first time - as much control as she could have in these circumstances anyway. Cassian was sitting on his bed, legs stretched out in front of him, already out of his formal uniform, and she was satisfied to see that he had placed enough pillows behind his back to support it.

He didn’t even lift his eyes – which he seemed to be straining – from his datapad, “I told you it wouldn’t be too hard.”

If he was openly discussing things, he must have swept the room to make sure they weren't overheard. She haphazardly kicked off her shoes and dropped down on her own bed, throwing her cap in the hanger’s general direction.

“Really?” he asked.

“I’ll pick it up later.”

His only response was a slight grunt that she pretended it didn’t make her imagine certain things.

She stared at the room’s high ceiling, encrusted with tacky, old duraplast arabesques, thinking back on what she had observed during the rounds of training that she had supervised. Nothing screamed at her in the way of potential recruiting; if anything, she had a harder time conciliating her own feelings with the fact that she might be expected to teach these people to shoot, only to have them shoot at her (or her friends) later on in their lives (if they survived long enough).

“You mean it wouldn’t be too hard surviving the first day?” she asked, “’cause it’s only the first day.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, Jyn felt guilty. She really shouldn’t be making this harder for him than it already was. So she reached up and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, shoving her head deeper into the mattress. It was a stupid thing to do, because her tight Imperial regulation bun pulled at her scalp and she had to smother a curse.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said cryptically.

She sat up and tugged at the bun, running her hand through her hair to disentangle it.

“You sound like Chirrut,” she mumbled and turned to look at him.

He was following the movement of her hands as she fought with her messy hair and then blinked when he was caught looking at her. There he was again with the staring off into nothing, she thought.

And just like that, she remembered. A girl, a little older than she had been when Saw had abandoned her, her hair a wavy, greenish hue with gold in its roots, that had been staring off into the different sentient-shaped targets in the range. Jyn thought she was just nervous, but what if there was something else there? Mandalorian cadets were usually overexcited at the prospect of shooting and exploding things. Several, she could tell, arrived with enough dexterity that told her it had been something they had picked up from a young age. This girl had not been different in terms of knowledge or skill, but there had been something else in her eyes.

Something akin to what Cassian’s did when he went off somewhere in his head.

“Thought of something?” he asked, because apparently she was equally as transparent when she was lost in her own musings.

“Yeah,” she said hesitatingly, “but I’ll have to see. By the way, what was the deal with that guy during lunch?”

“Oh, right,” he said, like it was possible he had forgotten, “that’s their head History professor, remember? He’s Alderaanian.”

Jyn made what came out as a disgusted noise.

“Not everyone has a choice,” he said softly, “and that might prove to be to our advantage.”

“You’d never talked to him before?”

“I’ve never been here before. Sward was in Carida.”

“Ah,” she said, and then felt her eyes widen slightly, because one afternoon before he was released from medical, she had sliced into his Alliance records and his father- she looked at him, tried to make it seem like she didn’t know.

She failed miserably.

He was watching her face and obviously caught on to the fact that she knew how his parents had died. He breathed through his nose and set those eyes of his on her, like he had done in that farking turbolift. She felt something hot crawl up the back of her neck.

“That must- that must have been hard,” she said slowly.

He only looked down at his lap, but there was the edge of a smile on his face. He cleared his throat, “yes, well. It had to be done. Anyway, I’ll see if I manage to talk to Colonel Gedez some more."

Jyn nodded sharply and started redoing her hair. Apparently this time, Cassian didn’t hide that he was watching her. Once she was certain her tight bun wouldn’t fall apart, she stood up.

“Want to go to dinner?” she asked a little bit too brusquely. The sooner they got it over with, the better.

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. She took in his socked feet peeking from under his light trousers and mulled something in her head.

“I saw people taking food from the mess hall into their rooms. Would you rather we did that?” she asked, praying to the Force that it was exactly what he wanted.

“If you wish,” he said, “but I think it would be good if we went back there.”

“Why? We arrived today. I am sure our esteemed colleagues will understand if we have dinner early in our quarters,” she was doing her best impression of a posh Imperial accent.

He raised his eyebrows, “they might also suspect us of fraternizing.”

Wait.

“Wha-“

He was quick to cut her off, “didn’t you hear these people during lunch? They have nothing else to talk about during meals other than their students and their jobs. We shouldn’t give them anything else to talk about.”

Jyn was sure she could fry an egg on her cheeks by how hot they felt, which probably meant they were red, which probably meant Cassian could see that she was flushed.

What the kriff was wrong with her?

He got up, rummaged through his own clothes for his dress uniform while still talking, “I know you don’t like to be noticed and that’s good. But hiding won’t help here. We should be perfectly forgettable to these people, so- we go out there, we eat, we come back to sleep. We do it all again tomorrow.”

At least all she had to do was put her shoes back on.

Dinner turned out to be the same meat, the same vegetables. She ate again with relish, wolfing down her food much like the cadets at the end of the refectory, while Cassian ate methodically, as if he didn’t bother with such trivial things such as perfectly decent food.

She supposed it went well with Joreth Sward’s Alderaanian snootiness.

Lupo Gedez, Sward’s new friend, stopped by their table as they ate, speaking rapidly in that planet’s language in such a way that Jyn didn’t understand a word of. The man had surprisingly kind looking eyes, which turned to Jyn at some point in their conversation. She fidgeted in her seat.

“I’m sorry,” Sward said in Basic, smarmily wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin (if Jyn could have rolled her eyes, she would have), “this is my colleague, Lieutenant Goldwyn. Helaine, this is Colonel Gedez.”

For a while, she thought she should stand at attention, but something in Gedez’s face made her reach out her hand, like some doting socialite, in what she supposed was female counterpart to Sward’s ways.

“A pleasure, sir.”

Inside she was reeling at being touched by that strange man, kind eyes or not.

She didn’t know what she expected, but he only firmly pressed her fingers in his, his kind eyes somewhat amused, “nice to meet you, Lieutenant.”

The two men continued their rapid-fire conversation in their native language and Jyn was thankful she could drone it out, even if she had suspected that Cassian had expected her interaction with Gedez to be more than what it was.

By the time they went back to their room, having been seen and talked to by at the least those officers they had already figured out mattered in the social hierarchies of the Academy, Jyn felt drowsiness set in. She could barely believe that she was looking forward to enjoying the comforts that the mission was affording her.

She headed straight for the fresher when they walked in, having sorted it out on the way that she could have it first. She was fast in the sonic, as usual, and quickly pulled on the large regulation pajamas their contacts had procured for her. She had to fold up all the four cuffs, but at least she felt comfortable – as comfortable as one did in Imperial gear. When she walked out, Cassian was sitting expectantly holding his own clothes to his chest, and as she marched towards her bed, across the large room, she was certain she caught something like amusement in his eyes.

Jyn didn’t have time to dwell on it. As soon as she hit the bed, with the knowledge that Cassian had secured their door lock and with the comforting sounds of him rummaging in their room, she fell asleep.

 

*

 

Her name was Dani Eldar, which meant she was from one of those clans Jyn had read up on in her brief. She found the girl practicing by herself the following morning, which made her frown, because she wasn’t sure that was allowed. Jyn forgot the little she knew of the Academy’s rules and regulations, though, when she noticed that Dani was not listlessly looking at the targets like she had been the previous afternoon. In the silence of the empty range, she hit all her targets with chilling precision.

This was someone who knew what they were doing, to an even better degree than their colleagues. So Jyn approached her, or rather, _Helaine_ , _Lieutenant Goldwyn_ did, her arms crossed over her neat uniform.

“Very well, Cadet Eldar.”

“Thank you, sir,” the girl shyly smiled, even as she stood at attention.

Jyn nodded to let her know she could be at ease.

“From what I observed yesterday, I wouldn’t have pegged your for such a markswoman.”

The girl’s smile fell, but whatever it was, she pushed through it and blinked at Jyn, seemingly taking her in and in the span of a few minutes, seemed to make a decision. Jyn decided that Dani needed to learn a thing or two, if she was going to be recruited.

But still, there seemingly were advantages to one being close to their students’ age, Jyn mused. Who knew.

“My grandfather’s death, sir. It was its anniversary yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, cadet.”

“Thank you,” she said, picking up the blaster rifle she was practicing with again and getting it into position.

She shot the digital Ithorian silhouette right on the places where it would instantly kill them. Did they teach these kids the anatomy of all species? Jyn had learned those things because she had actually had to shoot, stab and hit all sorts of beings to survive from the time she was eight. 

“You make it seem so easy,” she humorously remarked, “are you training to be a sniper? If you’re not, you should.”

The girl shrugged, clicked on the console so another target appeared for her. An Aqualish.

One shot, straight through one of the eyes.

“I’m thinking about it, because at least then they would train me harder,” she shook her green curls, “this _is_ far too easy for me. But I don’t know if I want to be a sniper… What Academy did you go to? You’re not Mandalorian.”

Jyn smiled. “No, I’m not. I went to Carida.”

The name fell from her mouth like it was nothing, like other names she had used in the past had also easily rolled off her tongue.

The girl cocked her rifle again, after selecting the moving silhouette of a Toydarian.

“What made you want to be an instructor?”

“I always wanted to be a teacher, but I am an orphan, so I had to join the Imperial Navy to survive. I got a scholarship to the Academy when I was nine. Being an instructor is the equivalent of being teacher, isn’t it?”

“Huh.”

Another well placed shot. And Jyn decided to make a gamble, if the little she had read up on Mandalorian history was anything to go by.

“Has your grandfather been gone long?”

“Ten years. I remember him only a little,” the girl had stiffened as she answered.

“Relish those memories,” she said, seemingly forcing herself to say the words, “I don’t remember my parents. Or anyone.”

As she walked away, she touched Dani’s shoulder briefly.

When she joined Cassian for lunch hours later, she shot him a beatific smile from over her cup of juice. He seemed puzzled for a slight second, as he slid into the bench in front of her.

“Good morning?” he asked in Sward’s annoying accent.

“Very,” she replied in Goldwyn’s affected tone. 

For the briefest seconds, she caught an approving smile in his eyes.


	3. My heart is an apple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [melanoradrood ](http://melanoradrood.tumblr.com), for doing beta work. 
> 
> When I got [ibonekoen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibonekoen/pseuds/ibonekoen)'s prompt, there were actually two of them. I snuck the other one in this chapter. Sort of. 
> 
> Thanks to all who kudoed and commented. I love this fandom so much. Come say hello over at tumblr, I'm estherlyon there as well.

By the middle of the afternoon, her optimism had died down.

Especially because she began to feel uncomfortable. 

Jyn popped out in the courtyard during break, keeping in mind the security cameras around her. Her feet ached from the Imperial regulation boots, from having to stand on them for hours on end while helping teenaged Imps better their aim, and belying that discomfort would probably raise eyebrows, so she tried to stretch her toes inside the leather, ease her cramping calves even in a sitting position on a bench out by some ornamental plants.

She was confident there was a blind spot in this courtyard somewhere. Mandalore had seamlessly transitioned into Imperial control like most planets aligned to the Republic, but they had always been fiercely independent. If this building had simply been retrofitted into a military school from one that had housed politically minded students, she suspected the Emperor’s cronies responsible for the process might have overlooked something. There had been a tendency – she figured – in the Empire of underestimating their opposition, as her father’s dead body on an Eadu platform evidenced.

So she looked, from under the brim of her cap for one single spot where she could breathe a little easier. And straighten her boots.

The first day she had been preoccupied in watching her surroundings, in categorizing every little detail around her. Twenty-four standard hours later, she had more than memorized the building’s ample corridors and learned the pattern of how different types of shoes slapped against the marble floors. And despite all the assurance she felt in carrying all this information, that confidence made her feel like she was more prone to errors.

She got up from the bench, gingerly, her cup of caff delicately in her fingers, holding it in a way alien to her calloused hands, and decided to see if she could take a few tentative steps. It wouldn’t do to sit for so long, lest her feet swell even more. And then, behind one particular ridiculous shrubbery, she saw them: the Alderaanian, Cassian’s “friend” and another tall, blond officer – Mandalorian, by the looks of him –, silently speaking in that planet’s language, which was the Academy’s official one after Basic.

Jyn had so far thought it far too risky that Cassian and Colonel Gedez had held conversations in Alderaanian openly in the refectory. But as she learned from watching her “colleagues” at the Academy, some leeway was allowed here, compared to civil society. As far she had observed, instructors tightly followed a training and teaching program, but were allowed _some_ autonomy. Buried in the library’s catalogue, Jyn had found titles that she had no doubt would have been considered scandalous in any other Imperial controlled environment.

But then, she mused, her father had taught at a university on Coruscant when she was a child and her parents had always seemed to happily get on with their jobs, despite a shadow lurking over her mother’s face every now and then. Jyn supposed now, from what she had read up since joining the Alliance, that Palpatine and his people weren’t adverse to knowledge; just that it reached those that might be empowered by it.

She could understand Mandalorian, though not properly speak it, and she drew away from the shrubbery in order to give the men their privacy when she noticed an affectionate undertone to their conversation. So she pulled her datapad from her pocket, pretending it had pinged with a message, and made her way to the bench on the other side of the yard, where the men could see her but could be sure they couldn’t be overheard. At the movement, Gedez turned to look at her and waved, and she just smiled in return, gesturing to the ‘pad in her hand with a long-suffering expression. He smiled back and turned again to his companion.

He must have not minded her presence at all, because when the Mandalorian made to leave, Gedez pulled him in for a quick peck on the lips.

So Cassian wasn’t kidding about the assumptions they were fraternizing if they kept holed up together in their room.

As Gedez walked off, she rifled through her datapad one more time for the Faculty profile. She hadn’t memorized them all, she admitted, but she knew the Mandalorian was another instructor.

Wull Saxon, an aerodynamics specialist.

Clan Saxon had always been allied to the Empire. Cassian probably knew about Gedez’s boyfriend – or spouse –, and if Gedez was aware that Cassian was a recruiter, he mustn’t have minded that Jyn witnessed his little display of affection. So maybe clan allegiances in this case was something that didn’t matter or-

She walked all the way to where the two men were standing and turned her eyes subtly to the security cameras: she was standing in her blind spot.

 

*

 

It didn’t surprise her to find Gedez and Saxon eating quietly side-by-side during dinner, conversing with the partners at their respective elbows. It also didn’t alarm her that the older man didn’t seek Cassian’s company. She herself had avoided paying Dani Eldar any undue attention when the girl arrived for her class’s turn at the range that afternoon.

By the end of day two, then, she and Cassian each got ready to sleep in their respective beds, but this time, she didn’t have the exhaustion of space travel eating at her bones. She was well fed and her mind was humming with the fact that there was just one more day of unnerving boots and extra hairpins. She closed her eyes, trying not to yearn too much for her mother’s kyber crystal (it was back on _Home One_ ) and timed her breathing to what she pretended to hear was Cassian’s across the room.

Jyn didn’t know if it had been fifteen minutes or an hour, but she was jolted by a strangled noise: her eyes flew open, hand reaching for the vibroblade she had stored under her pillow as she sat up in bed. Her movement, so abrupt in the dark, apparently made her partner burst awake at practically the same time, his hands clawing for something under the bed.

She touched the button on the wall next to her head and in the refurbished room; a blue light glowed from behind the wood paneling. She turned in Cassian’s direction and found him breathing heavily, looking at her like he had at the top of that tower on Scarif, the edge of a smile lurking on his face, except now it was clean and shaven and not grimy with death and the sea breeze.

“All right?” She asked, tucking her weapon back under the pillow.

He let the blaster fall on his lap, his hands shaking, his breathing a tad slower. Apparently, he couldn’t speak yet, because all he did was nod. She knew he had nightmares, because she had seen on his medical records that he had been prescribed enough sleeping pills to put a bantha in a coma. This was, however, the first time she was face to face with the evidence of the fact and it felt wrong. Not him, not her, no one should go through what they had been through and deal with the aftermath on their own. Jyn figured that if she always felt safest with evidence of his presence around her, the same must apply to him. Call her presumptuous.

They had settled down on that sand to die together, after all.

So she swung her legs over the little metal bed with the dull grey Imperial sheets and marched over to his side of the room, her feet absorbing the cold of the marble floors.

“Scoot,” she said.

“Jyn,” he was still sitting up, blaster still prone on his lap along with his shaking hands. 

She stared him down.

He stared back.

And then slowly, put the blaster under the bed, and made room for her.

The bed was too small, obviously, and her feet peeked out from under the large pajamas and hit his when she laid next to him, her back to him, protecting him from whatever could blast through the doors. At the contact, he hissed and she chuckled, and then yelped because he trapped them in between his warm legs by her heels.

 _Oh_.

It was his turn to smother a laugh. She wasn’t even breathing, though, and he sensed it, because he parted his legs a bit, let her feet go, and this was utterly ridiculous, but something ran down her stomach at the loss, like she suddenly felt kriffing bereft. She scooted the rough underside of her feet backwards again, feeling them catch on the hairs of his shins. And just like that, their legs were tangled. Her skin felt so warm, she was certain she was about to burst. Her heart was thundering so loud in her ears, she was sure he could hear it. 

She felt something hover over her waist, painfully so.  


“Jyn?” He whispered.

Jyn nodded, the bed so small there was no doubt he would feel the movement. And when he put his hand on her, slipping it over her abdomen, she couldn’t help but burrow herself in his warmth, even if his hands were still clammy with the cold sweat of his nightmare. She heard his breath catch and stilled a bit, ready to scoot forward, but he buried his nose in her hair and despite it being some stuffy, Force-forsaken room in a military Imperial academy, she felt like she was home.

Jyn closed her eyes, felt him match his breathing to hers, and heard him whisper something she couldn’t quite understand.

One day. 

They had one day left.

  

*

 

“Lieutenant Goldwyn!”

She stopped in her tracks, her shoes noisily screeching in the library’s ornate floors. In her sleeve, tucked along with the tiny vibroblade in the sheath under her uniform jacket, was a datachip she had been looking forward to using while pretending to research ancient weapons during lunch hour. Her prerogative as a shooting instructor, she supposed, and if she managed to avoid having to look at Cassian after they had woken up draped all over each other, that was just another benefit. 

(His mouth had been on her shoulder, against the bit of skin left bare because of the wide collar of her large pajamas and when she realized what it was, her skin started burning up. Their feet had been tangled and she had felt so, so warm and safe and comfortable, the potential embarrassment of their situation wasn’t enough to make her move at first. He had slipped into the ‘fresher without a word and since then, they had studiously avoided each other’s eyes. Jyn told herself - to take the edge off the sting she didn’t quite realize was there - that their focus was on the mission.

She noticed, however, that he seemed to be clenching his jaw half the time.)

It was Dani calling her, in the end, light hitting her eyes in all the right ways, which sent a few bells ringing in Jyn’s head. But this was the library, a place where people were expected to speak in hushed voices.

“Cadet,” she smiled, Helaine’s posh voice leaking from her mouth like some something she was used to now.

Dani motioned to a nook. The library, like most of the building, was intricately decorated, with alcoves by the glass windows with tables for two people. 

The table Dani was gesturing to was crammed with books and flimsies, even a few parchments. She made room for Jyn to be able to at least rest her arms on the gleaming wood top.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About my grandfather.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiled again, not allowing it to reach her eyes in a deliberate manner. A risky move, but she and Cassian were mere hours away from being released from their duties. 

“You’re going tomorrow, right? We were told you were only substituting Lieutenant Farhann for three days.”

“Tonight, actually. But yes, that is correct.”

“I was wondering, if it wasn’t a bother, if I could have your contact… I still have doubts about which way to choose in my career and the instructors here… They don’t- listen to us. Very much, that is.”

“Oh, sure,” Jyn picked up her datapad and sent the girl the forged, encrypted address of Helaine Goldwyn through which she would be able to find her anywhere in the Galaxy 

Dani smiled, a toothy thing, “thank you.”

Jyn surveyed the books spread out on the table: lots of history ones, about the wars that had destroyed Mandalore’s surface.

“Your grandfather?”

“My grandfather always said that one must know one’s enemy,” she said in quick Mandalorian.

Jyn nodded, got up and with a touch to the girl’s shoulder crossed her library to to do her little bit of slicing.

 

*

 

In the end, their presence went barely noticed, so they ate dinner quietly, exchanging as few words as possible, got two droids to get their luggage from their room and went to report their departure to Major Endario. They left in an open speeder this time, bound for Sundari’s main spaceport, inside the city’s dome. It was almost 00:00 standard and they were pretending to be two officers waiting for their transport, killing time in an ordinary caff shop, when they heard familiar clunky footsteps behind them.

Jyn swallowed a mouthful of horrible, lukewarm caff with milk and had to contain herself not to spring in the droid’s direction. All this time, she couldn’t believe how easy it had been and was still waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop. Not that she didn’t believe in Cassian’s competency, but she was certain – almost certain – that she would slip up and get them kriffed into being either killed or worse.

“Captain Sward, Lieutenant Goldwyn, your shuttle is this way.”

They didn’t acknowledge the droid. No Imperial officer in their right mind would.

A few moments later, Helaine Goldwyn and Joreth Sward disappeared.

For some outlandish reason, when they got into the stolen Corellian cargo ship the Alliance had sent to pick them up, Bodhi was at the helm and Baze was making tea in the galley. The older man huffed in amusement when Cassian and Jyn walked passed him on their way inside the ship, still clad in Imperial greys and black leather.

“We have to pick up a shipment on Mantooine,” Bodhi said as Kay strapped himself to the co-pilot seat.

“Great,” Jyn sighed, “something I know how to deal with.”

She was met with silence. Baze because he was busy with a thermometer in his kettle and Bodhi because he was maneuvering them out of Sundari’s dome. Cassian was sitting down, buckled up across from her in the cockpit, fiddling with his uniform as if it were giving him a rash. She reached for his hand and he threw a non-smile in her direction. Then he blinked.

“Is Baze making tea while we take off?”

“I have this under control!” the man in question bellowed from the galley.

Cassian just rolled his eyes.

“Where’s Chirrut?” Jyn asked.

“Asleep in their cabin. By the way, we’re short of space, so you’ll have to bunk together,” Bodhi said like it was nothing. 

 _For Force’s sake_ , Jyn thought, absently reaching for her kyber crystal and only finding the starched collar of Helaine’s uniform.

Bodhi wasn’t even done getting them through atmo when she unbuckled herself and moved swiftly into the one cabin that looked like it was untouched in the ship. The first thing she did was throw off her stupid cap and those clunky boots, stretching her toes out on the cabin’s cold floor. She was relishing that particular relief when she heard a knock behind her.

“Yeah,” she threw over her shoulder, closing her eyes because she knew it was him.

“May I-“

“Come in already,” she said brusquely.

This was ridiculous. It was one night. One rough night on a strange planet, doing a very hard job. They were going to be fine. 

He started with his shoes as well, sitting on one of the bunks and unlacing them until his feet were bared like hers. There were duffels in the room, presumably with their clothing, and Cassian caught her staring at them.

“I’m going into the ‘fresher,” he said, making for the bag draped with the heavy leather jacket, “just-“

His eyes were earnest, wide, even a little pleading, “Jyn, you did good there. You were excellent. Impeccable, really. So stop saying you’re not good at this sort of thing.”

Her breath caught in her throat, because all she did was talk to _one_ person; a teenager at that.

She was about to open her mouth to retort when Cassian said, “turn around for me?”

Anyone else making this sort of request of her was toying with the idea of getting punched in the face, but this was Cassian and he had just left her breathless, so it was actually a good idea that he wasn’t looking at her stupid, blushing face.

He tugged at her bun, “may I?”

She nodded, goosebumps riding up her arms, feeling like she was in some stupid syrupy holodrama like the ones Bodhi didn’t admit he liked to watch, as he started pulling out the pins from her hair, as careful as if he were defusing a bomb. She tried not to let the feeling overwhelm her, of his fingers on the back of her neck, turning her head this way and that to find the pins that had burrowed to deeply in the bun, rough against her scalp. 

“Better?” he asked when her hair was loose around her face, probably like she had been caught in a wind tunnel.

She turned around half-way, grabbing at her hair and trying to twist it into a knot that would hold on its own, “yeah, thanks.”

“Thank you, Jyn, for coming with me. And- and for being there. I mean it.”

He was looking at her like at that time in the turbolift, when he thought they were going to die, and frankly, so did she. And at that moment, Jyn felt something settle in her. Chirrut would later say what she was feeling was called self-worth.

“Come here,” she said, thrusting her hands in the general direction of his jacket.

He nodded at her before she even asked and she opened it, button by button, until she pushed Joreth Sward off his shoulders. She blinked her eyes at him when he motioned to do the same for her. The cold of the ship made her tense up and stepped closer, searching her eyes, as he touched her officer’s shirt. She didn’t know when it happened, if it had been when they were tugging the shirts from their trousers or a bit later, when they had each undone the other’s belts, but his mouth found her hairline and she pushed up on her toes, kissed his jaw, and then finally his mouth.

It was a soft, tentative thing at first, which grew hungrier as she pulled him in the direction of the cabin’s bunk beds. He tasted like that awful caff from the spaceport and smelled like clothes starch, detergent, with a little hint of sweat, and when _that_ hit her nostrils, she felt like swallowing him whole, because it was just Cassian and she in a cabin in a ship hurtling through hyperspace. No missions. No aliases. Nothing.

Jyn felt something warm and stead brewing in her chest as his lips skimmed her neck, as her fingers messed up his hair. His hand found her inner thigh and she had to bite back a moan. Then it occurred to her.

She was on her back on the bunk, her trousers with only one leg still on, on the point of being tossed off for good. He was already just in his underwear and she ran her hands down his shoulders and his chest, over his ribs – where she felt a badly mended fracture on the left side – and the hardness under the soft synthcotton under his waist. He clenched his jaw and breathed through his nose, and she kept moving her hands, all the way until they were gripping the backs of his thighs. She dug her nails there and felt his teeth scrape her pulse point in response.

Jyn was supposed to be exhausted and something in the back of her mind whispered that her friends would suppose them to have gone to sleep. She felt her mouth sharpen with a smile. 

“First one to make a noise loses,” she whispered.

Cassian’s eyes narrowed in the dark as he lifted his head to look at her. His reply was simply shucking off what was left of her uniform.


End file.
